I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Whoever invented Neapolitan ice cream is a total psycho. Turns out it’s those damn Italians. Well, just the ones from Naples. Neapolitan immigrants brought their awesome ice cream recipes to the cool side of the pond a.k.a. the new world a.k.a. the U.S.A. a.k.a. Italy is gross. I’m not saying Italians don’t know how to make delicious foods, because they definitely do. Gelato is amaze maze–I’m super grateful for whoever invented that. And remember in Eat Pray Love when Julia Robert’s character has an eating frenzy in Naples because the pizza tastes like heaven? She eats so much that her pants don’t fit. She would. However, Neapolitan ice cream is just downright wrong.

Okay, I’m gonna have to ask you to calm down about the pizza.

Apparently Neapolitan ice cream is a variation (almost an evolution) of spumoni. Let it be said that spumoni is good and Neapolitan isn’t. Have you ever been to a party where someone brings out the ice cream and it’s Neapolitan? It’s super lazy. The host thinks they’re being super creative by fulfilling everyone’s dessert wishes in one, but little do they know, no one wins when Neapolitan is served. It puts an immediate damper on all of the fun food times that everyone’s having. First of all, kids don’t know what Neapolitan is. They can barely pronounce the word. Hell, I can barely pronounce it. Strike one, Italians.

Secondly, people don’t always love chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. Usually guests will favor only one of those flavors. And I can tell you right now it’s definitely not all of them mixed together. Neapolitan is basically served block style with the flavors packed in vertical strips. If you request vanilla, you’re going to get vanilla with a little bit of chocolate. If you want chocolate, expect some vanilla and strawb, and if you want strawberry, I hope you like chocolate covered strawberry ice cream! It’s an impossible task to get one flavor without getting a bit of another flavor in it.

Ice cream should not look like a brick.

The vanilla is always a neon yellow color. Like, a color that isn’t even found in nature. The strawberry stripe tastes like…not strawberry. It doesn’t even have strawberry chunks in it or anything! And chocolate ice cream always tastes like coffee to me, so I’m probably not the best judge for that one. Except I do enjoy a good old fashioned Frosty. R.I.P. Dave Thomas.

I hope that we can all agree that ice cream isn’t worth eating unless it’s delicious. I don’t want to waste my precious daily calorie intake on ice cream that tastes grody. I’d rather eat something that never gets old and has a cute name like Cookie Dough, or Baked Alaska, or Pralines and Cream. Not Neapolitan.

Yeah, I don’t like my flavors mixing. I’m a little bit of a purist. I do like chocolate so having to negotiate that middle chunk as a kid was a real chore. Many birthday parties were ruined because of Neopolitan. Hahaha!

I actually like strawberry ice cream more than chocolate. But I’m weird like that. Have you ever tried McDonald’s strawberry milkshakes? They are amazing. Although, I don’t know if they have them in Canada 😉

Neapolitan was always a major fail at my house growing up. No one ever wanted the strawberry, but no one wanted to throw the box away after consuming all the chocolate and vanilla, so at any given time we would have like three boxes of the strawberry strips of Neapolitan in our freezer taking up valuable space that could have been inhabited by Rocky Road.

That’s such a grandma flavor. Something an old woman who survived “the war” would give her grandchildren and they’d look at her disgusted that there are no fun flavors named after musicians. The only thing worse than Neapolitan is the stuff they’d give us in elementary school where you’d need to eat it with a flat stick.

Hahaha omg the flat stick. I was always so into free food as a child that I would just embrace the stick. So funny. Do grandmas even eat ice cream? Actually I think they do, but just really slowly. And then the ice cream melts and they end up eating a milky soup. Brb throwing up.

Haha Lily! This is hilarious and I think you are speaking for milliions of people here with your right on! rant about Neopolitan Ice Cream! Pick one flavor Italy people! And I, for one, have never ever been served Neopolitan ice cream without being disappointed in my heart AND in my hostess. I say hostess because I don’t think there is any guy in the world who likes Neopolitan Ice Cream expect maybe for Nepoleon and he was really short so what does that tell you? I don’t know but it should tell you something! Haha! Funny blog Lily and I enjoyed the heck out of it! 😀

Thanks Linda! So glad you understand the off-putting ways of Neapolitan! I think you’re onto something about men never choosing Neapolitan. They would know what’s best in the ice cream department. Hahah I could totally see Napoleon enjoying some Neapolitan! He would have to have a booster seat or something. Thanks for reading, Linda! So glad you liked it! 😀

The flat stick? Mooslicker, you are priceless. The strawberry portion of Neopolitan is a killer. But you lost me, yes, Lily you LOST ME, at the photo of Julia Roberts eating the pizza. I can’t stomach Julia Roberts but her eating pizza to get fat is something my brown eyes can’t handle.

Oh trust me, I lost myself when I put that picture up. It’s so gross. But I guess that’s what happens when you eat, pray and love? Julia obviously has some sick obsession with Italian food. Wasn’t her first movie Mystic Pizza? I think I cracked the case.

My sibling and I also did the one of us eat chocolate (me) and the other ate the strawberry–neatly removing our preferred side without ever combining the nasty vanilla, which we left for the hapless parental units. I like gelato far more than ice cream, still, if pushed, will consume my weight in a good chocolate ice cream. Mother still buys this tri color stuff, and eats all three flavors.

Ewww. Moms are so weird. I mean, mine’s not, but most are. I like the team work between siblings. Sounds like you had a really routine going on. My bro and I would usually have the same taste in everything so fights would always ensue. Oy.

I always end up eating the chocolate part and only eating the rest once it’s gone. Yes, I would eat any ice cream that is put in front of me at this point. But I at least know that there were standards at the beginning of the binge-fest. But if I really had a choice, it would be for mint chocolate chip. I had a large gelato MCC the other day and it made me so so so happy.

Seems like everyone enjoys the chocolate the most. I’m with you on the anything-that’s-in-front-of-me thing. And I’m not even preg. Life’s not fair. Yummm mint choc chip gelato sounds amaze maze. Severely jealous of your life.

You’re golden. I like that you had the same observation on something so trivial. This is one of my earlier posts and I always kind of look back at them and cringe, but thanks for making it feel appreciated. I love your descriptions of Neopolitan ice cream and how terrible and traumatizing it really is.